Hello folks! This chapter, Qrow doesn't need a semblance to jinx himself and everyone around him.
107. Hybrid 3
Vale's Council headquarters were surrounded. Thoroughly.
Raven and her rogues circled overhead, in case anyone tried to escape by air. Students and teachers were arrayed around the back and sides, mixed with more seasoned riders that had joined them and the retirees that had followed Taiyang. To the front and center were the Atlesian Flight Squads, including Winter and Steele, plus a few more teachers and older riders, like Tai and Qrow. And at their head stood the gleaming mech dragon that housed Penny.
Now that James was actually looking at them all laid out like this, it was starting to seem a bit excessive. Then again, overwhelming force had been the point—he didn't want a battle, today. The Council were outnumbered two or three to one, even counting the students they'd brought in with barely grown dragons, and with a large number of the riders on James' side still occupied elsewhere fighting off the Grimm Cinder had drawn towards the kingdoms. Their surrender was little more than a formality, at this point.
"This is too easy," Qrow grumbled. "They aren't even trying to scare us off with rifles."
"Would you rather fight an army before we go in?" Tai hissed at him.
"Yeah! This doesn't feel right... and it's boring."
James sighed. "It's the Council, Qrow," he said. Penny bent her head low to deliver the message, quietly so that he wouldn't broadcast it to everyone nearby. "They're going to argue about terms for at least an hour before they agree to present them."
Just as he finished speaking, one of the building's doors opened. It wasn't a Council member that exited. Probably a lesser clerk here to deliver the terms, if James had to guess, but he couldn't help frowning.
"General?" Penny asked, using the speakers inside the mech to speak only to him. "Isn't it good that they finished quickly?"
James smiled wryly. "It's not finished by any means," he said. "The negotiations will be long and grueling, if only out of spite. I'm just surprised they didn't leave us out here a lot longer. I was expecting to have to ask one of the earth dragons to knock on the door."
She went quiet to consider that. James leaned forward in his seat, squinting at the monitor displays that showed him the building in front of him. Being inside the mech was... strange, but he thought that was probably a good thing. It was easier to do this when it didn't remind him at all of his days as a student.
"Well?" he prompted, when the clerk had been hesitating almost an entire minute. "Go ahead and say what they told you to say, we aren't interested in shooting the messenger."
The man cleared his throat. He didn't have a microphone, but Penny's ears were excellent. They should be transmitting the information to him perfectly.
James was having trouble believing that was what was happening, at the moment.
"General Ironwood and his rogues will submit themselves to arrest. If they choose to comply, the best possible effort will be made to find accommodations for their dragons in brooderies."
When he was finished, the clerk went very pale and started inching towards the door.
"That is completely unacceptable," James said flatly. "And they know it. Please tell them that I really don't want to break the door down, but I will if I have to."
With a frantic nod, the clerk turned and fled back into the building.
No more cage.
Now it stood in a dark, empty room, between the forepaws of a bigger dragon. There were others, too, crowding in all around it, so close that their scales were touching.
That was wrong. Touch belonged to the first day. The few seconds when it had possessed the same magic humans did, to make its body move just by wanting it. There had been bigger ones, helping it to its feet and licking away the bits of goo and eggshell on its scales. Then came bright lights, and something cold at its forehead...
The memories were foggier every day. Already it was half-sure that had all been a dream. In its dreams it always had the magic. Would that fade, too, when it forgot?
There was a noise. Metal groaning, but louder and deeper than it had ever heard before. Light poured in through the ceiling, revealing something else far overhead. A great blue vault, bright light, and an impossible smell.
Hybrid 3 was the first to move. It unfolded itself from where it was lying hunched on its stomach, and lumbered step by step up the ramp and into the endless room. Others followed, swarming over one another as they clambered up behind it, pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the unfamiliar brightness.
Three reached the top of the ramp. The building trembled with its weight, metal groaning and bending until it took the final step onto solid ground. Then it reared up to its full height. Its jet-black scales drank the sunlight, except where lines of silver reflected it until they shone like the lab's fluorescent lights. It towered over the crowd of hybrids behind it, over the dragons that surrounded the building, over the building itself, until half the strangers were lost in its great shadow.
Hybrid 194 couldn't see Three's head, but it was sure it must be touching that final ceiling.
There came a sound that wasn't a sound. It was a pressure, in the head and the chest, a great invisible weight pressing down on them all as Three opened its jaws and roared.
Shocked silence followed. One of the strangers stepped forward. An old dragon, all mottled greys and browns. Its answering bellow should have sounded thin and weak by comparison—but there something about it that turned it into an incantation, written in fire on the world.
The fight started so suddenly that it left Nimbus reeling. He charged a moment later than some of the older dragons, mostly just because he wanted to keep up with Huo. There was so much shouting and roaring that he could hardly hear Sun's incredulous shout.
"What the unholy hell is that?!"
"It looks like Gigas," Sage shouted back.
"Gigas is cute!" Scarlet gestured wildly at the gigantic dragon. "That is not!"
"Huo?" Zircon called out. "Where are you going?"
They were still charging in a straight line, directly towards the center of the action. Dragons were already veering off to collide with the hybrids, scattering into dozens of smaller fights. And at the heart of the chaos, orbited by several flight squads, stood the beast.
Nimbus hadn't thought a dragon bigger than Crucible could even exist. This one could have fit his entire head in her mouth—and even when she came crashing down onto all four paws, sending a shudder through the ground, she was still taller at the shoulder than he would be if he stood up on his hind legs. Her tail was thicker around than Nimbus' entire body.
"Nymph?" Zircon started to slow down, falling back behind Nimbus. "When are we going to turn?"
"We're not," she said grimly.
"But—!"
"We can't just let her rampage around wherever she wants," Huo snarled. "She could crush half the army just by lying down!"
"Or us!" Zircon yelped.
Nimbus couldn't help but agree. His vision was already blurring as they approached her... but he could see enough to follow the motion of her head as it swiveled. With the way his sight was blurring, her glowing eyes left trails of silver light as she moved. Six of them.
"Um," Zircon squeaked. Even Huo balked as she reared up again and swung a paw the size of a small airship at them. As it passed over his head, Nimbus could finally make out her claws. There were seven of them on one paw, not counting the rearmost one... or the extra pair that had grown up between the others, smaller and more wickedly curved.
"Back up!" Nymph roared, and shot a blast of water at the dragon's head. Her head moved slightly to the side, and three of her eyes closed to avoid the attack. Otherwise, there was no reaction.
"Take off!" shouted Neptune. "There's no way that thing can fly!"
It was true—as Nimbus leaped into the air, he soared over her broad back and saw that her wings weren't much bigger than Twiggy's. Forget flying, there was no way she could even glide. She was awkward and lumbering on land, moving slowly and stiffly because of the thick armored plates that grew all across her body. Even her tail was covered in the bony plates, and ended in a vicious spike.
"We're going to have to distract it for now," Sun shouted. "Too much armor!"
Huo spat a fireball at her anyway. She turned so that it washed across her shoulder, then whipped her tail towards him. He dodged it just in time, but it came close enough that the rush of displaced air sent him into a head-over-tail tumble in midair.
A shout came from behind them. "Heads up!"
Nora and Freya swept in from the side, aiming directly for the gigantic dragon's eyes. She opened her mouth to bite. With a yelp and some frantic flapping, Freya circled around to the back of her head unscathed. Huo managed to stabilize himself and retreat to a safer distance.
The rest of JNPR weren't far behind Freya, but Nimbus couldn't see RWBY anywhere. Until he looked down, and noticed them charging one of the main entrances of the building. He couldn't make out much of what was going on, since he was still seeing doubles and they were far away, but he had the sense they were fighting.
He really hoped they were having a better time than he was.
Harpy's dive carried them so close to the gigantic dragon's head that Pyrrha could see her own reflection in its eyes. Pale, ghostly, and oddly warped... but, if anything, bigger than she actually was. It was an impossible target to miss.
The blast of desiccated air struck dead-on. Pyrrha's chest ached with the roar that followed. Harpy shrieked and lashed out with her claws, catching the ridges at its brow and digging in. Its head was nearly as large as she was.
She crawled towards the metal plate on its forehead, even as the great head swung back and forth in an effort to dislodge her. It was bigger and more heavily armored than any of the ones that had been used on the pit dragons—more like a helmet, really, though it didn't cover the dragon's lower jaw. Harpy's claws bounced off with no obvious effect.
A flash of silver. Pyrrha twisted in the saddle to stare at the bits of the dragon's scales that were visible under the helmet. Bright lines shone like stars against the black, looking almost like letters in an alphabet that didn't exist. And they were glowing.
"Oh—!" she blurted, and the world spun.
She weighed a thousand pounds, and she was hanging from the earth by only the straps on her saddle. They traced lines of fire across her legs. Pyrrha's breath caught in her throat as she stared down into the endless chasm of the sky. Something gave. Everything spun around her once, twice, a third time, until she was so dizzy she could hardly see. Then her arms snapped out and she stabilized just enough for her to look down.
Up. Nothing but clouds, and nothing at all tethering her to the ground. She looked up.
Down. A funnel of dust and dirt and tree branches, parked cars and dragons and their riders, whirling around the dragon. Wind howled around her as she spun in a wide arc, faster and faster, until abruptly physics reasserted themselves... and she went flying.
The ground was not supposed to spin like this.
Twiggy flailed all four legs and her wings, but every time she managed to snap them open despite the wind, the world turned upside-down again and she was falling all over again.
She could feel Jaune still clinging to her back—but Pyrrha had been torn right off Harpy's. Twiggy twisted in mid-air, trying to find her, to fly out of reach of the hybrid's powers so she could catch her—
The effect ended as abruptly as it had begun. Twiggy started to fall, properly this time, and opened her wings. They ached with the strain of fighting changing gravity, and she still had to dodge around random bits of debris that were now falling from the sky. She could see dragons that hadn't been quite as lucky as her hitting the ground hard. Some favored injured paws when they got up. A few didn't get up at all.
She still couldn't see Pyrrha.
Then Jaune tapped her flank and shouted, "There!"
Twiggy folded her wings and dived—directly towards the gigantic dragon. Pyrrha was falling behind her, spinning slowly, her arms thrown out in an attempt to stabilize herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Harpy flapping frantically as she tried to reach her, but she'd ended up on the opposite side of the building after the tornado. She wouldn't get there in time.
It came down to the last fifty feet. Twiggy snagged Pyrrha under the arms and opened her wings wide like a parachute, sending them drifting gently to the ground... right between the giant's paws. She was forced to toss Pyrrha the last few feet to get her out of the way of a claw longer than she was tall. She landed in a graceful roll and came up sprinting, as Harpy streaked over their heads.
The dragon raised her paw to attack again. Twiggy bolted, but before she could strike her, Guang and Freya came roaring overhead. They swept past the dragon's head, shooting water at her eyes and raking claws across her nose before darting up and out of reach.
She shook her head, her many eyes squinting against the haze of dust and steam left by the attacks concentrated on her. Then the glow in her scales, which had been steadily dimming, brightened again. Her hind legs coiled beneath her. Muscles rippled. Her tiny wings spread... and she took off.
